They look the same to me. It’s hard to imagine that someone at Google behind that ad wasn’t thinking of the Sherba gorilla, much less working off an image of one.

As Goldman points out, Google might not have realized there were copyrights granted to inflatable gorillas:

One possibility: it never occurred to Google that any manufacturer of inflatable gorillas would claim a copyright over the product design. That’s not exactly intuitive.

That’s what the suit is about, whether Google violated Sherba’s copyright by using the image. Goldman suspects that the usage is so inconsequential that a judge might dismiss an infringement claim.

The suit seeks to prevent Google from using the gorilla image and the maximum amount of statutory damages allowed, which seems likely to be in the thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars, not millions.